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Player Kills, Over-the-Top Violence, Severity of Consequences & Effects on Quality


SCANDALOUZ
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Hello community,

Over-the-top violence, historically, has been a problem in GTA Roleplaying venues. This (in my opinion) includes the popular SA:MP venues, including LS:RP as well as popular GTA5 venues (such as you know where). There's no reason to think it won't be a problem in LS:RP V as well. We all see the "signs" of over-the-top violence. Boatload of Player Kills, too many bold and brave hot-shot characters, rapid escalations of conflict and of course a bevy of deathmatching reports/disputes. Put in the big picture, I think we can all agree that none of this is cool and doesn't have a positive effect on the overall roleplaying/portraying quality of the server (or any server).

We could go back and forth about all sorts of abstract and not so much reasons as to why over-the-top-violence exists (yeah, this is a game, I get it), but I'll focus on one in this thread. The severity of consequences (or lackthereof).

For me, there's two main culprits I can see when it comes to lack of consequences and the subsequent effect on violence and quality.

1) Jail time.
- I'll skip this one over though, because this is indeed a game and I don't expect nor will demand for people to be jailed for literal, real life months (for example) over a murder. I believe jail times in LS:RP are already severe enough. (Won't be mad if you make them more severe though, for all we know we might get better prison roleplay, but this is a topic for another day)

2) The concept of Player Kills.
- I trust we all know what Player Kills are so I won't bother with the whole gist of it. Ultimately we all know what happens though -- You don't lose your character.

Before I go any further, yes, I'm aware that:
- There's CK Wars; Factions can delete each other if it gets to it.
- There's CK Apps; Things you can fill to delete someone permanently with a good reason, or at least try to.

These are good. They're great aid for the whole more in-depth role play and all that, but I'm not talking about the dedicated, in-deep roleplay scenarios here. I'm talking about the random day-to-day situations that appear out the blue between strangers. Why do they appear? Why are so many charaters so hot-headed and/or fearless and why do so many borderline immersion-breaking, borderline meaningless deaths happen? Because there's a lack of severity in consequences.

I'll take a pause here to talk about a WoW roleplaying venue, I know some of the roleplayers in this communtiy have been there as well. I'll use Prologue/Legacy as an example (no advertisement intened, the communtiy is no more). TLDR: It was a private storytelling/sandbox WoW heavy text-based roleplaying server. The LS:RP of WoW, just in a fantasy medieval sitting with different mechanics and bla-bla. Anyway, the point. Legacy did one thing that not many (I can think of only two) SAMP servers did. They eradicated Player Kills. Every death was a CK. I'll write that again. Every death was final. No PKs, no waking up in the hospital with some compicated memory loss and bla-bla. Your character was no more. Now, on the surface, I can see why many players would frown to that. Boohoo, I've spent so much time trying to flesh out and develop my character and now my charater is just gone over a borderline meaningless encounter. Yeah, that sucks. Yeah the whole thing also resulted a lot of Deatchmatching disputes and drama in the forums, but... But it also had another, positive effect on the community. The roleplaying quality as a result was increased ten-fold. All of a sudden (I mean when compared to GTA) 50% of the characters weren't these fearless hot-shots with close to no regard for human life, let alone their own. People thought twice and thrice before doing something, and let alone something stupid -- because they full well knew that this bullshit might be the last bullshit they attempt. So... It worked and it didn't. Like everything, it had its pros and cons, but ultimately it worked. I say that on the grounds that the community has succesefully lived for years, produced many great moments and made many role players happy (and salty at times). The quality was memorable (despite all its flaws that it also had).

Anyway. Now that I believe I've made my point, I know that GTA is different in terms of pace and I know that it's different in terms of population and players' engagement with each other. (Bigger pop, faster pace, more engagement). So I know, that even if I wanted to, I can't persuade anyone to give up on PKs and say yeaaaah make every death final.

How about a middle ground though? How about making Player Kills a little bit more meaningful?
Here's a minimalistic suggestion, please pay no attention to the numbers that will be present as they aren't "crunched" and are only here to help portray the example.

A "lives" system. Sounds silly, I know, but hear me out. What if you have, say, three lives in your /stats. Every time you die scriptwise (get PKed) one of these lives is taken away. Once you're out of lives -- You're dead. Your character is gone. An automatic CK. Doesn't matter how "meaningful" or not the encounter(s) that led to your demise was/were.

There's some IFs here. Like, yeah, some of these encounters could have been none of your fault at all. Hell, for all we know, you could've been a poor victim of a cross-fire on your last life and now you have to lose your character over something that has nothing to do with your development, at all. Yeah, that sucks, but... But it's realistic. Isn't it?

What about deathmatching? Well I think that's pretty straight forward. If you lose a life over deathmatching, said life is refunded, nuff said. A little bit more work for our admin team, but to hell with it - they are here to SERVE US ARE THEY NOT?

The system can be toyed with. For example, say not dying scriptwise for an X amount of online hours refunds you a lost life automatically, granted you're not at max. Maybe people in law enforcement agencies could get an extra life or two, given how it's them vs the entire illegal faction section on the daily. Things like that.

It has to be mulled over, it has to be crunched, optimized or however you want to call it. I'm not here claiming that I'm proposing a ready fix.

But... The idea? The idea of Player-Kills ALSO being dangerous and not borderline without consequences (boo-hoo my inventory). I wonder how does the community & staff feel about that? Isn't that something we should pursue for the sake of overall roleplaying quality? Maybe with a system like this we'd actually see more down to earth and less trigger-happy characters? Less silly escalations?

I haven't turned this into a poll, because I want to see elaborated opinions and not people just clicking "no, I don't want to lose my character".

Cheers.

 

PS: Consequences lacking in severity or at all has a direct effect on roleplaying quality and character portrayal. This is a fact and I'll fight anyone who claims otherwise IRL.

 

 


It's 3AM, let me know if something isn't making any sense and I'll be happy to elaborate.

Edited by SCANDALOUZ

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1 hour ago, SCANDALOUZ said:

A "lives" system. Sounds silly, I know, but hear me out. What if you have, say, three lives in your /stats. Every time you die scriptwise (get PKed) one of these lives is taken away. Once you're out of lives -- You're dead. Your character is gone. An automatic CK. Doesn't matter how "meaningful" or not the encounter(s) that led to your demise was/were.


Yeah, absolutely not. Having a "lives system" is way too RPGish, and defeats the purpose of having CK applications between factions. This makes legitimate systems redundant. You will never get rid of over the top player kills on the server. There's no avoiding it. The victims of senseless, non-rp or non-legit PKs shouldn't be punished over it. This just seems like a lot of pointless workload being added to the Admin team.

 

 

1 hour ago, SCANDALOUZ said:

A little bit more work for our admin team, but to hell with it - they are here to SERVE US ARE THEY NOT?
 

 

I wouldn't go so far as to say this either. They're here to keep the server in order, and maintain as safe an environment as possible so everything runs smoothly. To enforce rules, and educate those who are unfamiliar with anything they may have missed. "Education over punishment" is their leading motto. I am not in favor of adding more workload to them, as aforementioned, this is unnecessary work that would be dumped on their shoulders. People have lives outside of the community, and shouldn't have to monitor PKs and the "lives" system 24/7.

 

No one should have to be forced to lose their character over PKs, especially if they have to pay for namechanges afterwards. Not everyone can afford namechanges every two hours when they're gunned down time after time. Imagine the amount of namechanges LEOs would go through alone just from large shootouts. Same with gangs.

 

No thank you.
 

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I can definetly agree with it being a huge problem in GTA roleplay, and roleplay in general, but as previously said, the player shouldn't get punished over PKs since it's a game and many of them just happen. 

 

We should rather try to counter throwaway characters since those are the ones going for over the top violence and getting killed a lot in the process. Something as simple as a character limit in a certain time period would counter this quite well. Say you can make 3 characters in 4-5 months, and you get an attempt freed back up after a month or two if the limit is not already at 3, like the monthly purchasable guns system works.

 

The numbers are obviously for an example and could be higher or lower depending on the need, but if you make a character you get bored of or don't like, you still have 2 more attempts and get your used one back in a month or two. It would make people actually put thought into the character they want to make and somewhat lose the throwaway characters in low quality roleplay, as at least some would think of the limit when doing something stupid constantly but they're unfortunately inevitable. Characters engaging over the top violence or getting themselves killed constantly eventually get CKd anyways, they would run out of attempts and have time to think how they got there, until they can make another character.

 

Not saying the method would be perfect and it definetly needs rethinking, but its a rough idea and in my opinion something like that would be way better than the lives system, as innocent players shouldn't get punished, only the ones who do it purposely. 

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I understand what you're saying about WoW RP, I've played WoW RP for a few years myself, but you generally have to remember that even though there was at some point an LSRP-esque private server that did something cool with character kills and made ic violence actually meaningful, that WoW is a completely different platform. You can't scriptwisely kill a fellow roleplayer on WoW unless he/she is in the opposite faction, so any IC deaths on that server, in my opinion atleast, likely took place between members of the same faction (Horde/Alliance etc) and these IC deaths likely required not only the compliance of the victim, but sometimes even the permission of the victim.

 

On GTA it's alot different. Technically I could just stroll up to you and casually shoot you for nothing no matter who u are and that counts as one of your 'lives', or even worse, CK's your character until you report me, get the report handled and the death voided. That can't really happen on WoW, In my opinion it'd just create alot more problems than it'd be worth. What works on WoW, in my opinion wouldn't work here.

Edited by La Tweaker
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9 hours ago, LordSpyx said:


Yeah, absolutely not. Having a "lives system" is way too RPGish, and defeats the purpose of having CK applications between factions. This makes legitimate systems redundant. You will never get rid of over the top player kills on the server. There's no avoiding it. The victims of senseless, non-rp or non-legit PKs shouldn't be punished over it. This just seems like a lot of pointless workload being added to the Admin team.

 

 

 

I wouldn't go so far as to say this either. They're here to keep the server in order, and maintain as safe an environment as possible so everything runs smoothly. To enforce rules, and educate those who are unfamiliar with anything they may have missed. "Education over punishment" is their leading motto. I am not in favor of adding more workload to them, as aforementioned, this is unnecessary work that would be dumped on their shoulders. People have lives outside of the community, and shouldn't have to monitor PKs and the "lives" system 24/7.

 

No one should have to be forced to lose their character over PKs, especially if they have to pay for namechanges afterwards. Not everyone can afford namechanges every two hours when they're gunned down time after time. Imagine the amount of namechanges LEOs would go through alone just from large shootouts. Same with gangs.

 

No thank you.
 

 

- I don't see how PKs having a little bit more consequences in comparison to pretty much nothing negates CK apps and wars.

 

- The staff serves us in all caps was a joke. In reality they'd have to do a single extra command. Jailing the DMer and then refunding a life to the DMed. Doesn't seem back breaking.

 

- Again, the purpose is not to further victimise PKed people,  but rather discoueage reckless behavior that leads to people being PKed.

 

 

5 hours ago, GangsterPhantominity said:

I can definetly agree with it being a huge problem in GTA roleplay, and roleplay in general, but as previously said, the player shouldn't get punished over PKs since it's a game and many of them just happen. 

 

We should rather try to counter throwaway characters since those are the ones going for over the top violence and getting killed a lot in the process. Something as simple as a character limit in a certain time period would counter this quite well. Say you can make 3 characters in 4-5 months, and you get an attempt freed back up after a month or two if the limit is not already at 3, like the monthly purchasable guns system works.

 

The problem with such character limitations is that people tend to switch/delete characters often for entirely different reasons, such as getting bored of said character.

 

 

5 hours ago, La Tweaker said:

I understand what you're saying about WoW RP, I've played WoW RP for a few years myself, but you generally have to remember that even though there was at some point an LSRP-esque private server that did something cool with character kills and made ic violence actually meaningful, that WoW is a completely different platform. You can't scriptwisely kill a fellow roleplayer on WoW unless he/she is in the opposite faction, so any IC deaths on that server, in my opinion atleast, likely took place between members of the same faction (Horde/Alliance etc) and these IC deaths likely required not only the compliance of the victim, but sometimes even the permission of the victim.

 

On GTA it's alot different. Technically I could just stroll up to you and casually shoot you for nothing no matter who u are and that counts as one of your 'lives', or even worse, CK's your character until you report me, get the report handled and the death voided. That can't really happen on WoW, In my opinion it'd just create alot more problems than it'd be worth. What works on WoW, in my opinion wouldn't work here.

 

You're talking about retail, the communities I'm reffering to were private and essentially custom made. Anyone could walk up to anyone and kill them, just like GTA, regardless of mechanical "faction".

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15 minutes ago, SCANDALOUZ said:

The problem with such character limitations is that people tend to switch/delete characters often for entirely different reasons, such as getting bored of said character.

 

Most definetly, but that's just another aspect a system like that would fight and I see it only as a win. You shouldn't need more than 3-4 characters in say 4-5 months for an example. If you need that many tries to get your character right, you should go back to the whiteboard and think it all over. 

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7 hours ago, SCANDALOUZ said:

- I don't see how PKs having a little bit more consequences in comparison to pretty much nothing negates CK apps and wars.

 

- The staff serves us in all caps was a joke. In reality they'd have to do a single extra command. Jailing the DMer and then refunding a life to the DMed. Doesn't seem back breaking.

 

- Again, the purpose is not to further victimise PKed people,  but rather discoueage reckless behavior that leads to people being PKed.

 

Automatically CKing someone upon three sequential PKs negates having CK applications. Anyone could just go and PK someone three times strategically throughout the week and automatically CK someone without needing to apply for a CK.

 

It might not be "back breaking" but it's just unnecessary and pointless work on top of everything else they have that is far more important.

 

It will victimize anyone who is PKed. "Discouraging reckless behavior that leads to them being PKed" is literally victim blaming as a blanket statement with no distinction between those who are and are not at fault for getting themselves PKed. Not every person who gets PKed is at fault; you can walk down the street for half a block and get gunned down because someone felt like it. You can walk into a store and get gunned down for the same reason. There are so many holes in this suggested system. Players would lose all of their characters within a week due to it, at no fault of their own. That's not even counting when you have gang wars, or wrong place at the wrong time occurrences. PD, SD and FD members would all lose their characters very easily just due to the nature of the roleplay they partake in. This would cause way too much extra work for factions, and it would disrupt the flow of all immersion, roleplay and development if people have to swap out coworkers every three PKs.

 

The Admin Team, as I said in my initial reply, are about education over punishment. They ban people as a last resort, so I do not see any world in which they'd willingly force someone to CK their character after three PKs to "discourage reckless behavior".  Admin Jails are sufficient enough for anyone breaking rules or behaving recklessly. No need to "fix" something that isn't broken.

 

 

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This entire post can be summarized as giving people limited PK lives and if they reach the end they are CK'd.

 

I agree and would even go as far as to say all IC deaths should be CK's. People have to value their characters for realistic decision making. I don't think it'd detract at all from the fun or video game aspect of LS-RP. I think it'd add more value to accomplishments and decisions. 

Edited by Florida
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